Jeff Foust writes that that’s the question the media should be asking of the presidential campaigns. I agree; until we know why we’re doing it, it’s not possible to come up with sensible way of how to do it.
And this is an interesting parenthetical:
…perhaps, the answer would be not to spend the money at all: in the mid-2000s, the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservative members of the House of Representatives, proposed cutting funding for President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration as part of a broader set of spending cuts. The chairman of the committee at the time? Then-Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, now Trump’s running mate.
Though there’s no requirement that it be the case, historically, the vice president has generally been responsible for space policy (going back to Johnson), though that has been much less the case in the second Bush and Obama administrations (thankfully, in the case of the latter).
I can’t tell from this study, because I consider it insufficiently controlled. For instance, they don’t say what generation they pulled the data from. A sixty-year old today is likely to be in a different state of health than one from thirty years ago. For all I know, the Apollo astronauts got their heart attacks from terrible dietary advice in the seventies, as my father did.
The Federation isn’t just socialist in the hyperbolic sense in which some conservatives like to denounce anyone to the left of them as socialist. It’s socialist in the literal sense that the government has near-total control over the economy and the means of production. Especially by the period portrayed in The Next Generation, the government seems to control all major economic enterprises, and there do not seem to be any significant private businesses controlled by humans in Federation territory. Star Fleet characters, such as Captain Picard, boast that the Federation has no currency and that humans are no longer motivated by material gain and do not engage in capitalist economic transactions.
The supposed evils of free markets are exemplified by the Ferengi, an alien race who exemplify all the stereotypes socialists typically associate with “evil capitalists.” The Ferengi are unrelentingly greedy and exploitative. Their love of profit seems to be exceeded only by their sexism—they do not let females work outside the household, even when it would increase their profits to do so.
The problem here is not just that Star Trek embraces socialism: it’s that it does so without giving any serious consideration to the issue. For example, real-world socialist states have almost always resulted in poverty and massive political oppression, piling up body counts in the tens of millions.
But Star Trek gives no hint that this might be a danger, or any explanation of how the Federation avoided it. Unlike on many other issues, where the producers of the series recognize that there are multiple legitimate perspectives on a political issue, they seem almost totally oblivious to the downsides of socialism.
You don’t say. That episode TNG did on cryonics was extremely off putting to me.
The Space Studies Institute is offering it free on Kindle this week, to celebrate the Apollo anniversary. If you haven’t read it, it’s a classic. Actually, it is even if you have read it.
[Update a few minutes later]
Sort of related: Our discussion of Evoloterra last night on The Space Show is now archived.
During the anniversary week of the first human moon landing, Eric Hedman reminds is that we know practically nothing about the effects of partial gravity on human (or any animal) health. This is a sign of how unserious we remain about human spaceflight.
It’s going to be a week from today, in Baltimore. Wish I could attend — I’m planning to be in DC the Monday after, but I’ll be in Florida that weekend.
